This article is written by Sadanand Kamath, a fellow enthusiast of Hindi movie music and a contributor to this blog. This article is meant to be posted in atulsongaday.me. If this article appears in sites like lyricstrans.com and ibollywoodsongs.com etc then it is piracy of the copyright content of atulsongaday.me and is a punishable offence under the existing laws.

Today, the 16th January, 2016 is the 90th birth anniversary of rhythm and melody king O P Nayyar. Based on his interviews, the musical career and the song compositions which are well known to most of the readers of the Blog, I may say that he was an unique personality in the sphere of Hindi film music. Some of the events in his life listed below give me that impression.
1. O P Nayyar was born into a family of lawyers and doctors which had nothing to do with music. He did not have any type of training in music. At the age of 6, he became fans of Pankaj Mullick, R C Boral and K L Saigal. At the age of 12, he started singing for All India Radio, Lahore.

2. He was the only music director who did not take Lata Mangeshkar for singing any of his composition of songs as ‘her voice was too thin for the type of songs he composed’. Any music director who remained active as a music director for nearly 25 years without using Lata Mangeshkar as a playback singer has to be a gifted music director. Interestingly, O P Nayyar who started his career as a singer in AIR, Lahore, gave up singing for the same reason.

3. One of his box office hit films – ‘Phagun’ (1958) had 11 songs. When Ustad Ameer Khan asked him as to why he had composed almost all the songs in Raag Piloo, O P Nayyar told him that he did not have the knowledge of classical raagas. It was just a coincidence that his compositions matched with Raag Piloo. In the later years, Ustad Ameer Khan told him that in “akeli hoon main piyaa aa” from ‘Sambandh’ (1969), he had used about 16 different raagas.

4. He started his musical career in Hindi film industry with an assignment of providing background music to the film ‘Kaneez’ (1949). His background music at the time of showing credit title of the film was an indicator as to the type of orchestration he would blend in his song compositions in the future.

5. A broad analysis of the personality of O P Nayyar by Javed Akhtar is quite interesting. He compares O P Nayyar’s personality with that of three main characters of Shakespear’s triology – Othello, Macbeth and Hamlet. All the three characters are perfect in their own fields except that all of them have one weakness each. Othello had poor judgement; Macbeth was over-ambitious and Hamlet could not take decision. These weaknesses led to their downfalls. Likewise, O P Nayyar was perfect in his field of music composition but he had one weakness – stubbornness which led to his isolation from the film industry in the later years of his life.

Like many in those days, O P Nayyar came to Bombay to become an actor. However, after the screen test, he himself realised that he was not a hero material and instead decided to become a music composer.

After spending considerable time in Bombay, he did not get any assignment to compose music for Hindi films. With his connection with AIR, Lahore, he got acquainted with HMV to record some non-filmy songs, one of which was ‘preetam aan milo’ sung by C H Atma. This song became a huge hit which attracted a few producers including Dilsukh Pancholi.

His first three films – ‘Aasmaan’ (1952), ‘Chham Chhama Chham’ (1952) and ‘Baaz’ (1953) turned out to be flop films. It was only after the huge box office success of ‘Aar Paar’ (1954) that O P Nayyar established himself as a music director. After the success of many films in the 50s like ‘Mr & Mrs 1955’, ‘CID’ (1956), ‘Tumsa Nahin Dekha’ (1957), ‘Naya Daur’ (1957), ‘Howrah Bridge’ (1958), ‘Phagun’ (1958) etc., he became one of the highest paid music directors of Hindi films. He churned out popular music compositions in 1960s as well the films like ‘Ek Musafir Ek Hasina’ (1962), ‘Phir Wohi dil Laaya Hoon’ (1963), ‘Kashmir Ki Kali’ (1964), ‘Mere Sanam’ (1965), ‘Saawan Ki Ghata’ (1966), Hum Saaya’ (1968) etc.

From the mid-70s, O P Nayyar’s career graph started falling. Apart from the emergence of Laxmikant-Pyarelal and R D Burman as the competitive music directors, he had problems with two of his most prolific singers – Asha Bhosle (324 songs) and Mohammed Rafi (202 songs). While Asha Bhonsle stopped singing for him after 1972, he himself stopped engaging Mohammed Rafi for singing his compositions for sometime from 1966 due to some tiff with him. He had tiffs with Sahir Ludhinavi, Dilip Kumar, B R Chopra, Raj Khosla and many more. I found it very interesting to note that O P Nayyar was an admirer of Sant Kabir’s dohas (couplets). In fact, during his Lahore days, he had recorded in his own voice a few of Kabir’s dohas. Here is a link. However, he seems to have ignored Sant Kabir’s preaching in one of his dohas insofar as his stubbornness and frank speaking are concerned:

[Speak in such words that fill the hearts with joy.
These (words) would make others as well as you calm].

O P Nayyar’s stubbornness and frankness slowly pushed him into isolation from the film industry. Among some of his frank speaking episodes, his repartee to Dilip Kumar at the ‘Naya Daur’ (1957) celebration party gives an indication as to his frank speaking. After Dilip Kumar had told OP as to how well he had danced to his music, OP retorted back by saying that ‘his music makes even a third rate actor to dance. It has such an energy’. He composed music for only 9 films between 1973 and 1995.

O P Nayyar severed the relationship with his family and stayed as a paying guest with Nakhwa family in Thane during the last phase of his life. He breathed his last on 28th January 2007.

One of the notable features of O P Nayyar’s film music during the peak of his career was to give prominence to one or two musical instruments in most of his song compositions. Even though Violin seems to be one of his favourite musical instruments, he also used Piano, Guitar, and Sitar, Sarod, Flute etc as main musical instruments in his song compositions. A few examples of songs where he had nicely blended the playing of the musical instruments with that of the mood of the songs are given below:

On the occasion of the 90th birth anniversary of O P Nayyar, I have chosen one of my favourite songs ‘ye duniya rahe ya na rahe kya pata’ composed by him for the film MITTI MEIN SONA (1960). The song is sung by Asha Bhosle on the lyrics of S H Bihari. Since no video clip of the song is available, I can only guess that this lori song is picturised on Mala Sinha. In this song, O P Nayyar has used Violin as the main instrument in combination with Guitar and Flute.

OP was accused of squandered Asha’s fund and two timing her.
Regarding if I remember correctly Rafi once came late for OP’s recording and was given a mouthful,
He gave music for 73 movies including Neerajanam (Telugu) (1992)
His last being Zid 1993
He was Rhythm King. Upperwale ne kya bheja bheja!!!